"THERE WAS A SURVEY THAT ASKED HOW MUCH WATER WE
SHOULD SAVE. THE ANSWERS RANGED FROM 100 PERCENT TO ZERO."
-
Wayne Bossert
FINGERPRINT OF FORTUNE,
a Kansas alfalfa crop is har
vested in whorls left by a cen
ter-pivot irrigationsprinkler.
Although advances in tech
nology have enabled record
crops, they have also begun to
overdraw the aquifer's
account.Wells like the one
supplying this sprinkler can
pump more than a thousand
gallons a minute-24 hours a
day-throughoutthe three
month growing season.Rain
fall replenishes only a small
fractionof that amount.
In parts of Nebraskaand
Kansas, state regulations
now requirethat meters be
installedon each well to moni
tor the flow and to enforce
pumping limits.
between air and lungs. How much water you need depends on how
effectively your soil uses it; by the same token, how easily the aquifer
can be replenished, or recharged, is determined by the soil texture.
Robbins has worked for the U. S. Soil Conservation Service for
nearly 30 years. For the past seven he's been preaching better ways to
retain moisture in the soil. Better retention immediately means less
pumping; after all, water is a heavy substance to lift hundreds of feet
up to the surface, and with fuel costs rising, water conservation is
being recognized as economic good sense. While some plains farmers
still resist change-unconvinced it's necessary, unable to afford the
cost of new equipment, determined to reject advice from outsiders
more are like Stanley Miller in Amherst, Texas, who told me flatly, "I
pretty much got religion where conservation is concerned."
Some
farmers are even beginning to define their harvest not in terms of
bushels per acre but as value per acre: money spent, money earned.
"Assuming water equals money," one man said, "which it does."
Robbins makes it sound simple. If the soil gets the right amount of
moisture (whether rain, snow, or irrigation water) and at the right
time, then you won't need to pump so much. In turn, less water will be
wasted in runoff and evaporation, and the plants, growing in soil
that's sufficiently moist but not sodden, will use the water more effi
ciently, producing a good crop with less irrigation.
Or no irrigation at all: There is a method, which is as old as agricul
ture itself, called dryland farming, though it isn't dry. It just means
shrewder use of the available moisture, and even a moderately skilled
farmer can save both money and groundwater. More and more farm
ers are turning back to it, but it's not always an easy sell.
"Farmers had no idea how much moisture they had," Robbins was
relating in his calm, we-can-all-understand-this manner. "The men
tality of the farmer is, 'I want to be sure.' There was just a lot of total
ignorance about irrigation. We put water on the soil too often. Wet
soils will not take water-dry soils do. But for 30 years the equipment
dealers had been telling them to speed up the center-pivot rotation.
They'd end up harvesting in December because the mud kept them
from harvesting earlier.
"People were testing wells to determine how much they were
pumping," he recalled in his baritone drawl. "But I said they could
test every well and we won't know anything more than how much
they were pumping that day. We've got to start managing it better.
First thing I did, I used gypsum blocks to monitor soil moisture."
Robbins goes out and, if he can persuade a farmer to try it, gives him
the gypsum blocks the first year for free and shows him how to use
them. These simple devices, each containing two electrodes, are bur
ied one foot apart, one foot to four feet deep. As the soil gains or loses
moisture, the current between the electrodes gives a number reading
on a meter. Then you know if the soil needs more water.
Tim Pautler, in Stratton, Colorado, doesn't mind giving his
OgallalaAquifer